Matt George (00:00):
Today's episode of the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast on the Unsettled Media Podcast Network is brought to you by Sensory Friendly Solutions. Discover sensory friendly solutions for daily life. To learn more, head to sensoryfriendly.net.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Unsettled.
Matt George (00:24):
Hello, listeners. Welcome back to the podcast, welcome to episode five of the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast. Number five, this is the half way mark of our first season together. Our guest today is Carol Stock Kranowitz. As a music, movement and drama teacher for 25 years, Carol observed many out of sync preschoolers. To help them become more competent in their work and play, she began to study sensory processing and sensory integration theory, SI theory. She learned to help identify her young students' needs and to steer them into early intervention. In writings and workshops, she explains to parents, educators and other early childhood professionals how sensory issues play out and provides fun and functional techniques for addressing them at home and school. She's best known for her book, The Out-of-Sync Child, which has sold over one million copies. And her subsequent series, the In-Sync Child. We give you Carol Stock Kranowitz for episode five of the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast. Carol, welcome so much to the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast. This is episode five of the podcast and we feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to speak to you.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (01:55):
Thank you. Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here, Matt.
Matt George (01:59):
Carol, for those who aren't familiar with your work and I'm sure many of our readers and listeners will be, can you explain in a nutshell what you do?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (02:11):
Yes. What I do right now is I write and I speak about sensory processing disorder and that's something I learned about over the years as a preschool teacher, at a school that was for typically developing children as well as children with developmental delays and other special needs. And I learned from the start that the children with the braces and the wheelchairs and the hearing aids were great kids to be teaching, they were eager to learn, they were in the thick of things. It was the other children who didn't seem to be enjoying their occupation of childhood that puzzled me. They had no discernible disabilities and yet, they would stand back from the finger paint or the mud pies. Or they would tip over the bin of toys and take off their shoes and socks and walk through the Legos or they would behave in very unusual ways. And those were the kids that interested me and I learned about sensory processing challenges. And that's what I figured other teachers and parents needed to know about too.
Matt George (03:50):
I can't wait to dig into your career arc and how you came about some of the ideas that you've been publishing, you're quite prolific. But I wanted to introduce, when I was reading your bio I had a really fascinating conversation with an occupational therapist who lives with autism in California, named Bill Wong. And Bill gave a really fascinating TED talk, it's had I think 22,000 something views already and he talks about his early life. And in the beginning, Bill had said that folks were reluctant to diagnose him with autism because of his high IQ all through school. But then he started to learn through his education, about how autistic children learn and how they play and the differences that you're mentioning. And Bill said, "I really see myself in these kids, this was my experience." And then he pursued a deeper dive into his neurodiversity and was eventually, as an adult, diagnosed with autism. So it's fascinating that there are these patterns that you can see, even in youth and at things like play.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (05:00):
Definitely and the patterns are exactly what I hope that parents and teachers will begin to observe. I hope that people will learn how to be detectives and put on their sensory spectacles and look for those patterns. Would you like me to talk about those now, Matt?
Matt George (05:26):
Carol, with your permission, can we first take a quick step back?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (05:30):
Sure.
Matt George (05:30):
Before we really get into the good stuff and let's just do a check in with the current moment. I've asked our guests to reflect on the current moment. I release a stat every once in a while, that says as of June 2020, sensory overload was being searched over 40,000 times a month on Google. And that might not seem like a lot as a number but what really got us paying attention was it was an increase of 50% on the past year, according to Google Trends. And so I'm wondering, what's the current moment teaching us about sensory overload and what has been your experience of the current moment, especially being in America?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (06:17):
Yes, I'm no longer in the fray. I'm retired now, so I know about this anecdotally but my understanding is that there is extreme heightened anxiety among children. What parents are complaining about is acting out and these are regulated kids, typically developing kids who are behaving erratically. I know from one experience I had in the spring, in April of 2020, I was helping out through a medium like Squadcast, to help an occupational therapist in Denver, working with a bunch of preschoolers. And we were trying to entertain them with games and movement experiences and songs. And these children, it was just very difficult for them to attend to a two dimensional screen, even though kids have more experience than we want with computer screens.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (07:46):
Even though they had experience with it, what they don't have is the real teacher and the proximity of their classmates. So everything that is under the surface is exposed now, all of the propensities a little body might have to be dysregulated. It's all coming out now. So because I'm not in the classroom, I can't be so fact based from my own experience but I see it through other people's eyes, I hear about it, as this dissolution of how children... Their ability to attend and to be self-regulating is being destroyed by this COVID.
Matt George (09:06):
I love what you say about being exposed in some way, it's all coming to the surface now and isn't this true of so many different things in this moment? We're starting to understand the frailty of some of the things that we've built and COVID has exposed that within us. And like you say, you talk about e-learning and learning online, I really feel for families right now because like you say, this is a challenging period. I was in one of our coastal towns and rural high speed internet access is a problem in my region. And I was in a cafe doing work as I typically do, as an internet based entrepreneur and I saw a mother and daughter scrambling to get connected to the internet on the cafe, just a few minutes before classes would start. Mom was clearly late for something, whether it was work or otherwise and being that they were in the cafe, means that high speed internet access was either too expensive or not available for this family. And you could see that it was traumatic for both, they were frustrated with each other. Mom was flustered because she wasn't used to the tech. I just really have a heart for families right now and for people experiencing sensory overload.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (10:27):
Oh yes, I'm so sympathetic too.
Matt George (10:32):
Yeah and Carol, what is it do you think we're experiencing in this moment? And I don't intend for you to speak as an expert but I love hearing the reflections that people are considering in this moment because we're all reflecting together. Do we have this heightened sense of anxiety and awareness because we're almost too tuned in? We're being bombarded with the news, we're being bombarded with media. What are we all going through right now as a collective?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (11:04):
Yeah, that's definitely part of it. We are bombarded and of course, children and dogs will pick up on the anxiety of their owners. Little babies will sense that as well as three year olds and eight year olds. So we're on overload in that way, that our sensory system is seeing and hearing too much news. But there's another thing, that is the absence of the stimuli that we need. So while we're getting too much of what we don't need and can't process and can't use, with the social isolation, being indoors much more than ever is really bad for us because nature has designed us to move and we're supposed to be outside.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (12:16):
If you think, it's been a very short time, it's been a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms, for people to be indoors and have heat and shelter and food easily provided. We're supposed to be out there looking for it, building it, collecting it, cooking it. And so sitting is not what we're designed to do. So even more sitting these days has to be detrimental to the developing child. And the social part of it, I think, is the very worst. My husband and I have tried to play a rummy card game with friends online and it works but it's nowhere close to being at a table with your friends, holding a fistful of cards. Multiply that a million times toward snack time and circle time and playground time and story time and all that. All of those opportunities are being deprived of our children.
Matt George (13:34):
Right, right. You mentioned movement being such a critical aspect of the development of a child and I know, we're all feeling this. We're all feeling this in our lower backs, in our shoulders, of sitting all day and staring at a screen. And I do agree with you, I think you lose something, don't we?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (13:51):
Yes, definitely.
Matt George (13:54):
Right. Carol, do you mind very quickly tracing your career arc for us? I'm so interested in how you found yourself where you are right now. I know you mentioned you've stepped away from the fray and you're focusing on things like writing at this point in your life and we'll get to your bestselling books. But how did you end up here? What peaked your interest in this field and when did you start running with it?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (14:21):
I guess I'm really an odd duck, Matt.
Matt George (14:26):
Likewise.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (14:29):
My interest in teaching was very minimal, I wanted to be a writer and was an English major at college. And got married, had two little boys who are typically developing people and they went to a wonderful nursery school in the neighborhood. And one day, I said to the director, "Do you need a movement teacher?" Because at the time, I was doing a lot of dancing. And she said, "Yes, why don't you come and teach?" And I said, "Gosh, great but I'm not a teacher, I don't have any education in education." And she said, "Oh, that's okay. You'll learn on the job." So it was an independent school and there were no requirements at that time, this was in the '70s. So I started teaching and immediately began to notice these kids who were not in sync with the other children. They would back away from the activities that the other kids enjoyed. Their feet never left the ground or on the other hand, maybe their feet were always off the ground. Maybe they were constantly swinging and constantly climbing on bookcases and jungle gyms. And they were not doing the typical things that other preschoolers were doing.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (16:05):
So for 10 years, I asked questions, why won't that kid ever use glue or finger paint? Why does that kid have his hands over his ears every time I strum the guitar? And I knew I wasn't great at playing the guitar but you wouldn't typically run out the door when I strummed. And there were some kids who would complain bitterly from my playing the guitar. Well, the other teachers, the experienced ones, didn't have answers for me. And at this time, ADD and ADHD were just beginning to come on the horizon. So we were trying to figure out, well, do these children have attentional problems? But no, sometimes they would not pay attention but other times they were deeply involved in something that interested them very much. ADD did not fit. I'm coming to the end of this little story.
Matt George (17:24):
It's great.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (17:25):
10 years after I started teaching, it was in the mid '80s, a pediatric occupational therapist volunteered to give the teachers at this preschool a workshop on sensory processing disorder. And in those days, it was called sensory integration dysfunction and we didn't know what that was but we trusted her. So she came and she gave this 90 minute workshop and it blew me away. It was totally answering my questions and so I learned about the three main sensory systems that very young children build all their future learning and behavior on. And one of those senses, I knew about. The tactile or touch system and that explained kids who would pull away from messy play or fine motor activities that required them to use their hands. Or these were picky eaters who didn't want certain textures or temperatures of food in their mouths.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (18:46):
I just did the tactile system and this was my introduction to the vestibular system, receptors are in our inner ear and the vestibular system tells us where our head is in relation to the surface of the Earth. And the inner ear tells us how fast we're moving and whether we're falling and are we going up or down? Are we standing up? Are we lying down. All of that are messages coming from the vestibular sense. And the third important sense is the proprioceptive sense, that's the sense of our muscles and joints, telling us what our body position is. Are we flexing or stretching? Are we lifting something heavy or light? Are we reaching accurately for the apple juice picture or are we knocking it over? Are we pulling a hairbrush through our hair? Are we pulling the seatbelt out from the side of the car accurately? Those are functions that we can perform with a good proprioceptive sense.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (20:10):
So I learned these three senses are very important and of course, I was so excited and became this therapist's disciple and I said, "Give me stuff to read." And she said, "There isn't anything to read." So another decade went by and I learned what I could from studying occupational therapist's evaluations of young children with the children's names blacked out. And I learned about kids who had sensory challenges and it was so hard to read it and to understand it and so I became driven to write something that people like me could understand. And that's the projectory of my career. So in 1998, I was able to find a publisher and The Out-of-Sync Child was published in 1998 and it has sold more than a million copies and it's been translated into, gosh, I think it's 14 languages now. The most recent one was Spanish.
Matt George (21:32):
Excellent.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (21:34):
And I'm very, very proud to have introduced this topic worldwide because about 16% of people everywhere, of all ages, have sensory issues that really, really interfere with their functioning in daily life and my book has helped.
Matt George (21:59):
I love this idea that you wrote something that filled a gap in the market, that you personally were interested in filling for your own growth. And I think lots of those projects end up being best sellers because they resonate with so many. When we now realize that okay, yes, there should be material that can be consumed by anybody, whether neurotypical or otherwise, to understand some of these issues and these statistics. 16% of people anywhere dealing with sensory issues. That's a heck of a lot of people and so a resource like this coming out, I think you're right, pays dividends for many. And if I may read one of the blurbs you received from The New York Times. "The Out-of-Sync Child has become the parents' bible to sensory processing disorder." Are you hearing from a lot of parents that are consuming this material and it really helping them in their family growth?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (22:59):
Oh yes, constantly. And it's not just the 16% who are people whose sensory issues are significant enough to warrant therapy but it's many, many more people. It's like you and me, Matt, who occasionally have some sensory overload or sensory underload. I think my book explains how the neurological system works in layman's terms and then we can see, oh, that's why I don't want to go on the rollercoaster. Because my vestibular system says, that kind of up and down, rapid movement through a space is making my vestibular system really, really uncomfortable. So yeah, I think the book helps people understand a lot of our everyday sensory processing. And we all are out of sync from time to time, think particularly when you've had the flu or when you've been on a very rocky boat or a very rapid elevator in a very tall building and you feel a little nauseated by that perhaps. Or I have some tactile issues, I really don't like my hands to get gooky. So I don't bake bread, I don't garden. It just makes me very uncomfortable to get my hands all gooky like that. Does that mean that I have sensory processing disorder? No, I don't because I can simply arrange my life so I don't bake bread and garden.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (25:03):
If however, those were the only occupations open to me, bread baking and gardening and I had this sensory dysfunction, I'd be hard pressed to earn a living. So we all have some sensory stuff but it doesn't usually interfere with how we get along in life. So I think my book has helped the parents, so many. I can't tell you how many parents have said, "This book explains my child and I also see how it explains myself." Because a question is, how do sensory issues emerge? Well, they're either hereditary, so we either get it from our parents or our grandparents or it's environmental. Well, in babies, babies who are premature often have sensory issues and they spend weeks perhaps, in the neonatal intensive care unit, which is not natural. They're not getting enough skin contact at Mommy's breast. They're not being cuddled and held and lifted and moved from the crib, to the carriage, to the backpack. They're wired and they're on their backs and they're helpless. So many of those babies will develop sensory issues as a result of early hospitalization.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (27:03):
Or kids who are institutionalized. Say they come out right but they're put into orphanages at an early age and this is true of many children who's early years are spent in Eastern European orphanages, where they're in crowded conditions without a lot of interaction with grown ups. So the neurological system is not given the opportunity to develop naturally and those children will have sensory issues too. So it's either hereditary or environmental or sometimes, we just don't know. Sometimes it just happens and there's no one person or no one thing that can be thought of as the source, sometimes it just happens.
Matt George (28:04):
Yeah and I think there's something also too about naming it and I believe that is probably a fundamental reason why your book has resonated so widely. This year I read Gabor Maté's When the Body Says No. And the idea that if you don't have the tools, whether it's because you don't understand the current moment or you've been thrust into the current moment and like you say, we're so new in this modern era, that if you don't have the tools to recognize mentally when your body's saying no, your body will say it for you. And that comes in the form of an illness or hitting a wall of some kind. Just the pleasure of reading Gabor's book and being able to name things now, was so helpful and I would imagine that some readers have given you similar feedback.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (28:52):
Yes, that's definitely right and my book, I'm happy to say, has reprieved parents from their own self blame because imagine you have a baby and you love this baby and this baby has tactile issues which mean the baby can't process being touched. So the baby doesn't know that when Mommy picks baby up, that's a loving caress. The receptors in the baby's skin are saying whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what is this? This might be hostile, I must get away. So the neurological system, it's like a traffic jam in the brain. Things are not running smoothly, tactile messages come in, the brain is not able to say this one's a good one, this caress is a good one. That caress is invasive and not a caress at all, that's harmful. The little baby can't make that distinction and so the child arches his back and pulls away and retracts from Mommy's loving attention. And then the mother thinks, I've done something wrong and my baby hates me. And so to find out that Mom is doing everything right and it's the baby's system that is undeveloped and needs nurturing in a certain way, that is so relaxing and that's what I hear so often. "You have made me realize I am not a bad parent, Carol."
Matt George (31:01):
Powerful.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (31:02):
And I hear that so often, it makes me want to weep.
Matt George (31:05):
Powerful.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (31:06):
Yeah.
Matt George (31:06):
When you were doing the research process for this book, I imagine it was research intensive, was there something you took away from that research that really blew your hair back? As you're saying, that 16% of humans in general deal with some kind of sensory issue. Those are the kinds of stats that blow my hair back. Bill Wong in episode four of the podcast, saying that 35% of autistic adults are unemployed in America, one issue he's really tackling. That blew my hair back. When you're doing the research process for the book, was there a big takeaway throughout the course of that process or was it a more holistic experience of saying wow, this really needs to be spoken to.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (31:51):
I think it was both. I think it was finding out how many children have this problem. It was learning that it's not discrete, I think that was a big one, Matt, now that I think back. When I wrote the book, I thought I was writing about sensory processing issues and thinking about it as a discrete issue like chicken pox, like some people have sensory processing issues. I found out very soon after the book was published that sensory issues overlap with every other condition and I will say every other condition. So parents with children with Down syndrome, for instance. Or with cerebral palsy or with spina bifida or any kind of other issue, would say to me, "My child also has sensory issues and your book helped me understand that part."
Carol Stock Kranowitz (33:06):
So that blew my hair back. My expression is, it knocked my socks off but I like yours, it blew my hair back, that's right. So I was thinking I was going to be writing this book for just a group of parents and teachers who were dealing with kids with sensory processing disorder. I didn't realize I would also be contributing to the understanding of parents with all kinds of other disorders as well. And then the autism aspect of it, I did a little research on autism when I was writing my book and I did not understand the... It's not just overlap, it's entwinement of those two disorders. Everybody with autism has sensory processing problems. Not everybody with sensory issues has autism, of course. But that was a blow your hair back understanding, when I understood that. So I'm uncomfortable when people say, "Carol is an expert on autism." I am not, I am not. I know a little bit about autism, I know a lot about sensory processing disorder. But I do know that there is that very strong connection. If you're autistic, you have sensory issues for sure.
Matt George (34:49):
Right and then if I'm getting the timeline correct, the In-Sync Child comes later.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (34:57):
Yes, yes. So I have a friend who I met 40 years ago. I was teaching at this wonderful school, it's called St. Columba's Nursery School in Washington D.C. Columba was an obscure Scottish saint and the church is named after him. So I was teaching at the preschool there and learning about these out of sync kids, what made them tick or not tick. And working with the occupational therapist who I mentioned before, came to our school and was teaching the teachers about sensory issues and she was a consultant for us when we had kids who we had questions about them. So I was working with the therapist and I considered myself an OT wannabe. I just loved the whole learning what I did about occupational therapy.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (36:17):
Okay and at that time, this therapist and I were screening children for sensory issues and if the kids had evident sensory problems, we would suggest that they go to get occupational therapy. If they had what we considered soft issues, not so crystal clear, we would send them to Joye Newman. Joye Newman is perceptual motor therapist and she had a program running here in the Washington area called Kids Moving Company. So kids who had difficulties with motor planning or had rocky motor coordination, that kind of kid would go to Joye and she would fix them up. So Joye and I were not occupational therapists, we were on the fringe and we got friendly and we had a lot of kids in common because I would send kids to her.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (37:34):
Anyway, our friendship developed and then about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, we were taking a walk one day and talking and we decided we needed to write a book about in sync children because we wanted to get away from the negative. That was one thing, we wanted to get off the electric circuit and the book shelf that was devoted to children with special needs. And what we wanted to do was get into the world of the child not yet identified with any needs but who we were worried about. And so we had been worried about the kids who spend too much time with their computers and their two dimensional worlds. And so we decided to put our heads together and start appealing to parents of typical children, to say get your kids moving, get your kids outdoors. Get your kids doing heavy work activity and pushing and pulling and moving their bodies and relating to their environment, going through obstacle courses and looking for challenges. So we wrote the book called Growing... Excuse me, Growing an In‑Sync Child. And then out of that emerged a collection of activity cards, The In-Sync Activity Cards. And the cards are also in a book form and now, hot off the press, so to speak, we have just produced 10 webinars.
Matt George (39:33):
Oh, excellent.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (39:34):
This is our In-Sync Child Program and four of the webinars give an introduction to child development, sensory processing, visual development and perceptual motor skills. And six of the 10 webinars are each devoted to a very modest piece of equipment, such as a roll of masking tape or a few paper plates or pieces of rope. And so six of our webinars are what to do with rope for some in sync activities. And these 10 webinars, we're going to be marketing them through a Canadian group called ECE Formula. ECE stands for Early Childhood Education Formula and also, they're going to be translated and published into Greek, French, Italian and Spanish and spread around the Mediterranean world.
Matt George (40:46):
That's really fantastic, Carol.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (40:50):
Thank you.
Matt George (40:51):
When our listeners listen to this, they see the world solutions tacked on to the end of the podcast and so we want to plug these resources. We want people to be able to engage with the books and now that we're in this strange world of webinars, where can our listeners do that?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (41:06):
Oh, thank you. The books, I think the easiest thing is to go to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble and type in Kranowitz, K-R-A-N-O-W-I-T-Z or Newman, Joye Newman and then the books will pop up. And the webinars, eceformula.com and actually, I think it's today that the first four webinars are going to go up there. There have just been a few little pieces that have been needed to get that going and the next six will be up in another week or so. And in Greece, the website is Upbility, U-P-B-I-L-I-T-Y, Upbility and I think it's .org. No it isn't, it's .net. Upbility.net. And the materials have not been translated yet, so give them a month and then go there. So we're really excited and also, our website, insyncchild.com and we're going to have information there for people too. All of this is just happening right as we speak now, this is wonderful timing.
Matt George (42:48):
Well, I'm glad we got you when we did, Carol and I'll make sure that I put live links to all those resources in our show notes and on our blog, so that our readers and listeners can access this material.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (42:59):
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Matt George (43:02):
You're very welcome. You've been very generous with your time but I have one final question.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (43:07):
Sure.
Matt George (43:07):
Every time we wrap up one of these episodes and this has been a great one, the final question is always about strategy. Everybody has a way to reduce the noise of the current era. Whether it's getting outside for a walk, whether it's mindfulness, whatever your practice is. Our readers and our listeners will be curious, Carol, what are your strategies to reduce the noise of the current time?
Carol Stock Kranowitz (43:32):
Oh, well I definitely have a very high movement quota, as do most children and most adults, actually. I need at least an hour of vigorous activity every day or else you just don't want to talk to me. I'm very crabby if I don't have my exercise. So I swam, I took muscle conditioning classes at the gym, I took Pilates exercise classes and then coronavirus happened. So now I just walk and that's the only activity that I do. It gets me outside, I walk three miles and then I'm okay. And I'll tell you, Matt, if I didn't do that, I really would be a basket case, I would. I would be a little lump. So I suggest to everybody, even if they have not been big exercisers. And if they haven't found that that is the solution, I highly recommend it. You don't have to walk fast, you just have to walk. Because remember, everyone who's listening, nature intends us to be moving all day long and not sitting. And when we move, we are in sync.
Matt George (45:08):
That's a great way to end, Carol. The fact that these have become so timeless as strategies, movement, mindfulness, awareness, it means they're true in some capacity because so many of us feel it so deeply. So I really appreciate you taking time to be a part of the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast and I can't wait for our listeners to hear this episode.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (45:29):
Thank you, Matt. I am so happy that we've had this chance.
Matt George (45:34):
Likewise, it's been a real pleasure, Carol. Be well, take care of yourself south of the border and I hope we reconnect soon.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (45:40):
I look forward to it and be well everyone who's listening.
Matt George (45:44):
Thank you. Bye, everybody. Okay, Crystal, we're back for the reflection segment of episode five of the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast and I would be remissed if I didn't say another big thank you to Carol Stock Kranowitz for joining us on this podcast. New York Times best seller, over a million copies sold. Really impressive, really thoughtful and I'm happy you've had a chance to listen to the podcast and reflect. And with that, let's get right into it. Let's talk about what was meaningful to you.
Crystal (46:21):
Well Matt, I have to say, as I did with our guest last week, with Dr. Bill Wong and again, this week with Carol Stock Kranowitz, I was fangirling just a little bit. Because Carol's book, The Out-of-Sync Child, she first published it in 1998 and I can't believe I'm going to confess this but I started practicing as an occupational therapist in 1994 and her book changed my practice as an occupational therapist, changed my understanding. She talked about there not being a lot of information out there and I'm going to say, even for occupational therapists, there was but in terms of accessible information that really made practical or understanding of our bodies and especially little bodies and children but of our bodies as people, as sensory beings. And so her book, that book, The Out-of-Sync Child, Matt, it is, I'm going to say, consistently almost the only book... Many good books have come since that I recommended to parents in practice but even if parents weren't readers and weren't seeking out extra information to learn about their child, I would still recommend it. And many a local library has it or has access to it and still, it's that foundational. So to have her on the podcast, to have her share her insights and to be able to listen in to her brilliance in making simple what sometimes feels complex and overwhelming was an absolute delight for me.
Matt George (48:16):
That's the biggest thing I think, with science communication and why it's become such a big industry right now. So you start practicing in '94. Sure, there's technical material, sure, OTs are sharing information. But that one document that makes the sector or the industry accessible is why, to me, so many voices like Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, are blowing up. Because you've made it consumable to people who don't know the technical jargon. And one thing that really blew my hair back and I was going to ask you about this in the reflection period, is what is it that happens when you name something? So in 1998, The Out-of-Sync Child comes out and parents by the thousands and millions ended up buying the book. But parents by the tens of thousands are contacting her and saying, "This is my life, I now can name this." What is it about naming it that gives us this freedom to then address it?
Crystal (49:17):
I think even if we reflect a little bit on what Carol called the book, right? The Out-of-Sync Child. It's not the problem with your child, it's not this massive thing that's not understood. It's not complex vocabulary. It's just even saying look, your child's out of sync and an understanding that we as people, that's something we can relate to. We immediately have an image, an understanding, a feeling, a sense, no pun intended, of what being out of sync is. Also in that concept, going to a place where we can imagine also being in sync again, right? Even those simple words, that simple title, makes it feel like this is something we can grasp, right?
Matt George (50:23):
Then we can walk the road towards a better tomorrow or at least understanding the idea of what it means to be out of sync.
Crystal (50:32):
Yeah and we're giving words to it that are accessible, that we use in our daily life, right? And a little later in the podcast, Carol introduced some of, I'll say a little bit more of our scientific vocabulary about our sense of proprioception and our vestibular sense. And giving examples of vestibular senses, our sense of balance and our proprioceptive senses, our sense of movement. But even just making those things very relatable, understandable and that if we understand a problem in a way that we can relate to it, it helps everyone get to a solution.
Matt George (51:14):
While we were speaking, I wrote accessible language and the reason I wrote that is because it seems to me that Carol may have had an advantage being a bit of an industry outsider. She said, there's a big gap here specifically for parents, I want to research a book that filled that gap. And the reason I wrote down accessible language is because a mentor of mine once ran my writing on my technical field through a program that shows you how accessible your language is and it was terribly inaccessible because I was an industry insider. So do you think she maybe had an advantage being a researcher and coming at it from the perspective of how parents digest this information?
Crystal (51:57):
Yeah, very much so and I think just her years... She talked a lot about observing, her observations as a preschool teacher. She said this and it struck me. She said she was really encouraging people to learn how to be detectives and literally, on our website, on the Sensory Friendly Solutions website, we have a download for parents when they sign up for a newsletter. And look, I tell parents, become a parent detective, that's what you are. You're seeking to understand and making, as you said, that information just accessible and relatable makes all the difference. Matt, I'll tell you, we do a lot of blogging. We blog about the podcast on our website and have done a lot of blogging if you go there. I have the same challenge, I'll write a blog post and the same sort of feedback will come back before I publish. You have to just make the information something that people can relate to and understand and then have meaning in their daily life.
Matt George (53:23):
Certainly and that download you speak of will include that link in the show notes for this episode. I want to hear your feedback further on the second half of the episode but one thing that I thought was interesting was how we're seeing throughways now that we're into episode five, of how this all connects. And one of the things I believe I brought up was Dr. Bill Wong looking back in hindsight at his childhood and understanding the out of sync child once he had OT training. He said, "Wow, this is me." And Carol was like, "I can't tell you how many times I've heard that in reader feedback." Which is great.
Crystal (54:00):
Yeah, yeah. Again, something else I highlighted that links in, she talked about children learning through play and for Bill, speaking about his play and his play patterns and habits as a child undiagnosed with autism. And Carol talked a lot about children not being in sync with the other children in their play. And that the strength and the importance of development and learning through play and how being out of sync, your body, your senses being out sync, how much that impacted play and development. And how much she worked really hard to identify when there were problems. And she talks a little bit about referrals to occupational therapy but also, referrals to other solutions to prevent and preempt problems from happening and I really valued that advice.
Matt George (55:22):
Yeah, certainly and she mentions in that same vein, that as humans, we do have this high movement quota. And right now, one of the things that I think or she thinks is really compelling to talk about during the pandemic. And we've had this mentioned by Maureen Bennie of the Autism Awareness Center and several others, is that lack of physical stimulation in this moment.
Crystal (55:44):
Yeah. Talking about the movement and being outside circles back to what Dr. Gander said in the first podcast and how nature bathing is... I'll describe it as being very sensory rich, it is but that is incredibly important and as we think about speaking about the pandemic and COVID, it's highlighted something else. Some words that really struck me, is the frailty of what we've built, right? It's exposed a little bit of the frailty of our lives right now and why we're having these conversations, to shine a light on that and to shine a light on the solutions.
Matt George (56:38):
Hello, listeners and welcome back to the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast. This is episode five, it's the innovation segment. We do not want you to leave a single episode of the Sensory friendly Solutions Podcast without having something to go and do. We've talked about it a lot on the podcast. Carol and I talked about it. How in this moment, we're not as engaged as we once were with the world, both physically and mentally. And as a music, movement and drama teacher for 25 years, this is a huge goal of Carol's, to communicate how we do this in this moment. And so the innovation segment is simple.
Matt George (57:29):
What we first have to do is, if we're in the position to, we need to pick up The Out-of-Sync Child. It's Carol's first book, over a million copies sold, blurb in The New York Times. You can find that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or go directly to the website. That's the outofsyncchild.com and we'll include that in our show notes for this episode. Further to that, there are more books. There's The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun, there's The In-Sync Child series that is a response to The Out-of-Sync Child and it's success. Carol has upcoming events, she has talks, articles, more resources and you'll find all of that at the outofsyncchild.com. It's the theme of our innovation segment. We want you to get out there and act and this is a great way to do that. We'll see you back on the podcast for episode six.
Matt George (58:34):
Thank you to our sponsor TakingITGlobal, ensuring that youth around the world are actively engaged and connected in shaping a more inclusive, peaceful and sustainable world. As part of their rising youth initiative, they're looking for young people who are inspired with ideas and ready to take action through youth led community service grants. Head to risingyouth.ca to learn more and to become the next Rising Youth Grant recipient. The podcast is also supported by New Brunswick Community College as part of the community resource awareness during and after COVID-19 applied research project funded by the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation. Learn more about NBCC's efforts to transform lives and communities at nbcc.ca. The Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast is produced by me, Matt George, is engineered by the great Zachary Pelletier and is part of the Unsettled Media Podcast Network-